THE MINDFUL VIOLINIST

So I've finished the second week of Makers Precourse. Not gonna lie, this week was a lot harder than last week. I have finally dragged myself through the 40th chapter of Learn Ruby the Hard Way and a kicking back with a well-earned Franziskaner. FYI, LRTHW ishard, and I just bought Chris Pine's Learn to Program on Amazon, in actual book format which I shall mark up with a highlighter, because I think I need more practice. I even went back to Code Academy to have a look at their explanations for things - boy is anything easier than LRTHW.

My thoughts from this week:- Fixed growth mindset is so important: our coach shared this fantastic Ted Talk which you should all watch. https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve .

The phrase "effort + difficulty = new neural connections" really resonates with me. Programming is hard, but I look back on this week and I think of all the things I've learned that I couldn't do before and that's pretty cool.

- Some katas on Code Wars are easy and some are beasts. Choose wisely, and take an ally.

Who knew Gloucester Cathedral was on Github?

​ - Pair programming is great. I did my first pair session today and having another head on a problem is really helpful.

- It's really important to understand what a piece of code does, rather than just call it blindly. Thanks to Gus, who spent two hours explaining arrays over Slack to me to make sure I REALLY understood everything before calling a function to do the dirty work for me.

- However, why not take the programming outside and work through with a pen and paper while being surrounded by daffodils?

​ - I might have given myself a pep talk as though I were a Starfleet officer.

- I'm trying not to go too crazy on the Precourse, simply because I know the course is going to be MEGA intense. So stopping when my brain says enough and making sure to have fun is important!

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Paula Muldoon

I am an Irish-American violinist living in Cambridge, UK. I perform with the Philharmonia, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, and many other top groups, and am also the Business Developer for Encore Music and am on the Makers Academy course for programming.